From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Daniel Gimpelevich Subject: Re: [PATCH] allow setting wiphy.perm_addr after driver probe Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:04:35 -0700 Message-ID: <1407791075.28221.74.camel@chimera> References: <1407780269.28221.63.camel@chimera> <54DF22CF-59D7-4633-A625-896F58C26A64@holtmann.org> <1407789645.28221.68.camel@chimera> <37210DB5-2911-4FA3-9299-7701C5003945@holtmann.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "John W. Linville" , "linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org Wireless" , Johannes Berg , "David S. Miller" , Network Development , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Marcel Holtmann Return-path: In-Reply-To: <37210DB5-2911-4FA3-9299-7701C5003945@holtmann.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Mon, 2014-08-11 at 13:56 -0700, Marcel Holtmann wrote: > The initial wlan0 can be removed as every other netdev attached to the > wiphy. It can also be as easily re-created. > > Since the wiphy does not have a valid MAC address, my proposal here > would be to just not create the wlan0 in the first place. This means > that the wiphy can be still discovered via nl80211. I repeat, currently wlan0 is *not* created. > It also means that the wlan0 netdev needs to be created by userspace > now. And a valid NL80211_ATTR_MAC be provided. Similar to what is > already done for P2P devices at the moment. That should just solve the > problem. The creation of wlan0 already comes from userspace, but the PHY has its own MAC. > We really do not want to announce a netdev when registering the wiphy > device and then having to mess with its MAC address via sysfs somehow. > This all needs to be properly reflected over RTNL. > Again, no netdev is announced. There just isn't a way to set the MAC of the wiphy device itself. How about this: What if the driver were to leave the MAC at all zeros initially, and sysfs could set that if and only if it's all zeros at the time?